


Tabled

by iarrannme



Series: Winter Fables [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Asthma, Character Study, Chronic Illness, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kindness, Love, M/M, Massage, Meditation, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Resilience, Survival, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21526468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iarrannme/pseuds/iarrannme
Summary: What got him through it was remembering Steve.Bucky on Zola’s lab table.  Zola flatters himself Bucky survives because of the serum, but it’s not a piece of meat on the table, it’s a human being.  (Mostly flashbacks, only minimal reference to the present.  Minor reference to period-typical homophobia.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Winter Fables [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1546102
Comments: 8
Kudos: 40
Collections: All of the Stucky, Bucky, Bucky Barnes, Bucky and or winter soldier centric, Captain America and Bucky Barnes, Stucky, Stucky Collection





	Tabled

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [SpideyFics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpideyFics/pseuds/SpideyFics) for the beta. Check out their work next!

What got him through it was remembering Steve.

At least once every winter, there’d come a night when he wasn’t sure there’d still be two of them in the morning. He’d lie next to Steve, holding him to share every scrap of body heat, or staying back to let the heat of Steve’s fever radiate unhindered. He’d massage Steve’s fever-aching joints and temples, or re-wet the cloths to cool him off again, or keep one hand warm and still in the middle of Steve’s back through the worst of the coughing, just so he wouldn’t be alone during any of it.

Asthma attacks were the worst. He always felt so fucking powerless, watching the simple movement of air become a battle. He’d once tried breathing through the tiniest straw he could find, when Steve wasn’t around, just to see what it was like. He’d made it three breaths before he’d flung the straw away, heart pounding, hands shaking, and sucked down the hugest breaths he could take just to reassure himself he still could.

No wonder Stevie never ran away from a fight. If you couldn't run or give up, because there was no escape from your own body so what choice did you have but to handle your terror or die… He’d always known Steve was brave, but he’d had no idea. No fucking idea.

“How do you do it?” he said, the next time Steve had survived an attack and was lying exhausted in their bed. He was carefully massaging Steve’s neck and back, always sore afterwards from the strain of trying to get enough air. (He’d done his best to forget the moment he hoped for an asthma attack so he could touch Steve this way again.) “How do you live through that and not go crazy?”

“Who says I don’t?” Steve managed, then wheezed a few more times before adding, “Not like you to miss a chance to call me crazy.” A few more wheezes. “One breath after another.” He smiled faintly, eyes closed. “Remember when I told you to turn the clock around?”

Bucky nodded. “I did wonder what was goin’ on in your head.” The cotton of Steve’s T-shirt was almost worn through; Bucky pulled another blanket up over him.

Steve’s smile grew warmer. “But you did it… I have to forget how hard the last breath was. Can’t fight for more’n one at a time. Can’t think about the next one, or how long it’s been. How much longer it might be. One breath at a time. All I got strength for.” He stopped to catch his breath again. “Couldn’t tell you all that right then. Thanks for doing it anyway.”

Bucky moved his hands to the back of Steve’s neck – Steve always tensed up there when he was anxious, then paid for it with headaches – and worked his way slowly along neck, shoulders, spine, and ribs, torn as always between letting his hands tell Steve all the things he couldn’t make his mouth say and fear that Steve would get the message. “Somebody’s gotta watch out for you, punk.”

Steve’s lips twitched. “Jerk.” He turned a little, a silent request, and Bucky moved to the newly available part of his back.

“I almost –” Bucky sighed. “No, I _don’t_ almost know what you mean, I try so hard to take every breath for you, _my_ damn sides are always sore after one of your attacks, but I ain’t sayin’ I really know what it’s like.”

Steve’s smile was still small, but it didn’t disappear. “That’s good though, Buck. I never want you to know.” He took the first breath he’d managed with no wheezing since the attack. “Now trade me.”

Bucky’s hands froze. “What?” Steve couldn’t mean –

“Turn over. Reckon I know what feels good for sore sides after an asthma attack.”

Bucky obeyed, too flummoxed not to. He was careful to lie on his stomach, because he didn’t want to explain anything, and he wasn’t going to make any noise at all, nothing that would – Steve dug his thumb into a spot Bucky hadn’t even realized was tense, and he groaned. Dammit.

“Well now _that_ almost made the asthma worth it,” he heard. Dammit again, did Steve really say that or was _he_ the one going crazy? He lifted his head to see and found Steve staring at him, grinning mischievously. He flushed. This wasn’t the first time Steve had made a joke that sounded… sounded like it meant something Bucky was trying so hard not to think about.

He’d been silent too long. Steve’s eyes narrowed speculatively. “Was expecting you to jump all over me for even suggesting that,” Steve said. “But you look like the time Sister Mary Albert caught you looking up Mildred Watson’s skirt.”

“Millie told me to, and I didn’t see past her knees,” Bucky protested absently. Then he put his head back down so Steve wouldn’t see anything else in his face. He just had to figure out how to deflect whatever Steve was thinking or wondering or – Steve pressed his thumb into a slightly different spot. “Mmmph,” said Bucky. Dammit.

After that, “got some asthma in my back” became a running gag – a double-edged joke that let them slide past talking about the many illnesses that might kill Steve, or the fact that two men had no business wanting their hands on each other. Bucky noticed, though he said nothing, that Steve was as careful as he was to crack that joke only at home, only when all the curtains were closed, and that though Steve’s hands didn’t have the strength of his own, Steve had an artist’s eye for posture and motion: he always knew exactly where Bucky’s “asthma” needed to be soothed. Bucky was proud the first time _he_ was the one to _treat your asthma, think you got some right there_ before Steve asked.

When they came for Bucky at Kreischberg, he figured his number was up. He’d helped carry remains of former fellow prisoners out of Zola’s lab, unbuckled straps from corpses of men who looked like they hadn’t gone easy. He longed to fight hard enough to make them kill him quickly – he could at least damage a few, even tired and hungry – but they all knew the drill after that had happened the first time. They didn’t punish you at all – other than whatever they did to you in the lab anyway – but they shot a fellow prisoner or two for every one of them you hit. So Bucky walked off with them as jauntily as he could manage, tossing a “See you fellas around – save me a beer” back to his fellow POWs and relieved right down to his core that Steve would never be in a place like this.

He doesn’t remember anymore everything that’s been done to him on this table, and he’s not going to try. At least they don’t ask for information. He thinks he wouldn’t give it, but he’d hate to find out he was wrong. They haven’t even tried to make him stop saying his name, rank, and serial number; they ignore any noises he makes, except for Dr. Zola, who occasionally says “hmm” when his screams are particularly ragged.

So he gets through it by remembering Steve. Sometimes he can think of Steve – a smile when a drawing comes out right or when Bucky comes home, his voice saying “I can do this all day” – Bucky thinks he might have mumbled along to that memory once or twice – the feel of Steve’s spine under his hands, or Steve’s fingers on the back of his neck after a long day. Other times whatever they’re doing to him leaves him able only to survive from breath to breath. He’s so damn grateful to Steve for showing him how it could be done, and grateful too that no one makes it through more than a few days of this. It would kill Steve to ever know that Bucky had had to learn this skill.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have ... "enjoyed" is maybe the wrong word for this? If this "have some feels about Bucky loving Steve during torture" fic gave you some feels, and you want more, but with even more angst, try [Permanence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2559809) by varooooom. It's very well written, but I am really not kidding about even more angst.


End file.
